Two years post the war, Lucy shows up on Desmond's doorstep, alone and soaked in rain. A few days after that, Desmond asks her to come with him for a night of security patrol at a resort he is temporarily working for... Slightly AU.

It was half an hour before they calmed down. Desmond had ended up on his back, staring at his ceiling, with her head and hand on his chest.

Slowly, the smile faded from his face as he remembered everything that had happened between them. A wave of emotions passed through. Should he be pissed that she came after all that she put him through? Should he just be happy she was there... and there alone, at that? Should he be worried about her after she just came all that way in the rain? Should he apologize for his part in all this?

He finally settled on just asking her what she was doing and how she got there. It was to accomplish this most simple of goals that he raised his head.

"Wait a minute, how did you find me? And how did you get here? Where's Gary?"

Lucy's smile also faded. He felt it go, as her face was still pressed into his chest...

"Gary's back at home," she replied. "At least, I think he is. I left a few weeks ago."

"What?" demanded Desmond, sitting all the way up. "You left Gary a few weeks ago?"

Lucy looked at her feet and nodded. "I wanted to see you."

Now, a brand new wave of emotions hit him. She left her boyfriend a few weeks ago to go looking for him. His first instinct was to hug her, but he suppressed that in favor of finding out exactly how she felt about it. Some part of him didn't believe that it was as simple as her just deciding that she liked him more than her boyfriend of two years.

But her explanation still didn't answer, "How did you know where I was?"

"Your father. I went to ask him when I finally got back to New York. I thought you might have gotten your old job back at Bad Weather, but they told me you didn't. So I went to visit Bill, and... well, he told me."

On top of everything else, Desmond now felt like he might punch his father the next time he saw him. He had accepted William's generous offer to help him out financially (because he refused to say that his dad was "supporting" him) on the grounds that he ask before doing anything like that. Desmond didn't want to be found, least of all by Lucy... Or, at least, half the time... The other half, he often had to resist the urge to go looking for her, himself... To his knowledge, the only other people from the Assassin order who knew where he was now were Shaun, Rebecca, and his parents. And now, Lucy...?

"Desmond?" came the concerned voice of Lucy.

Great. She was worried. Worried that she might have said the wrong thing, or made a mistake by coming. The predominant feeling in him was to crush those worries before they did any damage. So, Desmond just told her that it was alright, he just needed a moment to process all this. But she didn't look satisfied with this explanation, and so he tried to push it to the back of his mind as he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

"I'm happy to see you," he said softly into her ear. "It's just that it's a lot to take in. That's all it is. I promise."

When he pulled back, he saw the traces of a smile in her expression, and he knew that he'd done it. For now, he'd be able to take time to figure out how to feel about this.

"I'm... happy... to see you, too," she said back.

But the smile had gone. In its place was anguish; finely masked anguish, but anguish all the same. As before when they'd been in situations like this, he reacted to her discomfort by pulling her towards him, so that she could huddle in and lean against him.

For a few minutes, they were silent. Lucy grasped Desmond's shirt and held onto it, as if to confirm that he really was there. Desmond kept a tight grip on her and never slackened for the very same reason. It was exactly how they had spent their first night when they'd found out that she wasn't really dead. And when it was over, they looked into each other's eyes for a few minutes more. Still without saying anything, they just looked... And looked... And looked... Trying to read the stories of each other's lives in the last two years through their eyes.

Desmond saw confusion, pain, remorse, and anger.

Lucy saw shock, fear, uncertainty, and happiness.

It was Desmond who first broke the silence. "How did you get here?"

"I walked," answered Lucy.

Desmond's grip on her tightened and his eyes widened. "All the way from my dad's house to here? That's two hours of driving!"

Lucy shook her head. "No, I didn't walk all the way from there! I rode a bus, but it broke down. They told us we'd have to be transferred to a nearby hotel so we could make our own arrangements, but that it would be a few hours before transport could get that far out on the highway. I..." She looked down at his chest, and her voice broke a little. "...I couldn't wait that long. We were forty-five minutes out from your complex... so I slipped out of the crowd, and... walked."

Desmond took a deep breath and kissed the top of her head, then slid out from under her and began to walk away. "You need to eat something," he said. "Quickly, too."

But Lucy wasn't fooled. "What? What's wrong? Please, don't be angry with me, Desmond, I came all this way to see you and I– "

"–could've been killed!" exclaimed Desmond.

Seeing the hurt return to her face caused him to take another deep breath, and run his hand down his own face.

"You could have been killed. You could have been molested, or even just mugged. Some gangster could have decided to have fun with you for the night. Hell, some random crowd of women could've jumped you and stolen your clothes. Any number of things could've happened." He took a step towards her. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout. I just... Nobody would've known where you were."

"I was an Assassin for seven years!" replied Lucy... loudly, incredulously. "Do you think I couldn't handle myself against a group of WOMEN looking for a change of clothes!?"

Desmond held his hands up and jutted his lower lip out. "Alright, alright. Bad example. Really bad. I just don't want anything to happen to you, alright?"

She said nothing. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head lightly. "Should I not have come?"

The question took him completely off guard. He could do nothing except stare.

Unfortunately, that was what she took to be his answer.

"I understand. If you could just help me find a way back, I'll go and... do... something," she finished awkwardly. "For now, though, could I just use the bathroom?"

She started to walk past, but he caught her by the arms and pulled her back to him. He had decided. Then and there. He knew how to feel about Lucy.

"I don't want you to go."

Again, they looked each other right in the eyes and couldn't look away. What followed was incredible.

It started with passionate kissing. Then, she slipped a hand under his shirt. Then, he returned the favor. Next was the gradual undressing as they made their way to a more comfortable surface... His couch, in this case... There was a point in which Lucy was straddling his waist where they stopped kissing for a moment and both considered briefly, but seriously, not doing it.

But neither could stop themselves... in the end... They spent most of the night with their hands over each other's mouths – or their mouths all over each other – trying to keep quiet. Or... well... quiet enough...

Desmond wasn't sure what woke him up the next day: the knock on the door or the sunlight falling on his eyelids. It was the knock on the door that registered with him first, though. In something of a panic, he scrambled to his feet and grabbed the nearest article of clothing he could find, but the knocker got a little more persistent. A headache began to form behind Desmond's eyes as he slid back into his boxer-briefs, threw the nearest blanket over Lucy, and headed for the door, determined not to let whoever it was come in.

It turned out to be Rebecca, and she didn't wait for an invitation.

"Is Lucy here!?" she asked excitedly, pushing right past him into the living room. "I talked to Bill last night and– Oh..."

Her gaze had just fallen on a stirring Lucy. Her arms fell limp at her sides and her jaw opened. When she looked back at Desmond, her eyes had become approximately the size of tea saucers. The effect was a little alarming.

"She, uh... She definitely 'made it', then, huh?"

Desmond could only nod.

"Desmond?" came the voice of the woman in question as she sat up on the couch. "Rebecca!?"

The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.